From the perspective of creators who want to make a living off of their craft, almost nothing, from a practical perspective, is going to change. A tiny fraction of musicians make the vast majority of the money in the music industry; this was true from the beginning of recorded music and will remain true tomorrow. A larger group will be able to make a decent living, a much larger group will be able to make a mediocre living, and the vast majority will not be able to make any living at all just by creating.

From the perspective of people who just love to create and have no expectation of making a living off of it, however, things are already a lot better than they used to be. They can put the fruit of their labor up in a public place and even if only a dozen people ever see it, odds are it’s 12 more than would have seen it in the pre-internet age. And public exposure means more people have the chance to suddenly become popular enough to make a living off of creating than did in the past, since it used to be you had to put in a great deal of energy just to get published or get a gig or some equivalent.

I agree with you that the creator’s perspective does get largely ignored. But I don’t think the Kindle Store or iTunes really does anyone any favors; it’s still only going to be a tiny minority of people that will make money on their creations.

Someone is analyzing why I-Tunes succeeded and is probably learning what they could improve to charge even more. And they are considering the implications for news. I suspect at least one of these shrewd marketers is Murdoch. Perhaps that’s assuming a competitor is smarter than he is. But I’d rather do that than assume his ultimate solution is to collude with competitors to put up a paywall.

Katherine Warman Kern
@comradity

Is this a tax? It looks like it is just a better product ( Amazon is often cheaper, but people still like iTunes).

So much of the economic analysis of digital sales seems to overlook the simple and traditional answers. What ever happened to Occam’s Razor?

I had a few other nits to pick with Graham, too. You can see them at http://editor.blogspot.com/2009/09/seminal-work-or-sloppy-thinking.html

As for your observation that “people are happy to pay for things if it’s easy enough” — cf. “It Feels A Little Like Free” — likewise, right there. Tolls are a total pain. Can you imagine if a toll — a real toll, like getting on a bus, or crossing a highway — were as easy as buying a CD from iTunes?

So let me spin Graham on this one. Graham says, dismissively: “iTunes is more of a tollbooth than a store.” Sloan/Carmody say, affirmatively: “iTunes is the future of tolls!”